Carbon counter - a global solar community

Solarcentury is in business for a purpose: to make a meaningful difference in the fight against climate change. How do we measure our success against this overall objective?

We’ve been hard at work crunching numbers so we can demonstrate that with every passing second we’re achieving this mission.

The carbon clock calculates the amount of clean solar electricity generated by every solar installation Solarcentury has sold since we were formed in 1998. And with every unit of solar electricity generated, there’s a corresponding amount of carbon that has been prevented from being released into the atmosphere.

We can say with certainty that we have passed the 1 billion kWh mark – and because during our long history we’re active across 4 continents (10 countries, and counting), we’re confident that this number will continue to grow way into the future.

Our solar installations have generated over 1 billion units (kWh) or solar electricity… and counting. We know that sounds like a lot, but what does it mean?

If we consider that a typical-sized home in the UK consumers 3,500 kWh of electricity every year, then when we talk about 1 billion kWh it means that the solar we’ve installed is currently meeting the energy needs of over a quarter a million UK homes every year (285, 700 to be precise).

“

This is a huge achievement that all our Solarenturians, past and present, should be proud of. Our mission to help fight climate change through the widespread adoption of solar is as relevant today as when we were founded nearly twenty years ago. And this counter is further evidence that we’re making a difference in cutting carbon from our atmosphere and protecting the planet for future generations

“

Susannah Wood, Managing Director – Residential

Do the maths

A kWh (kilowatt-hour) is a unit of energy which is equivalent to 1kW of power expended for one hour of time.

To calculate the electricity generated and the carbon prevented, we must consider where each solar project is deployed around the world, and the regional variations.

Electricity generated

To calculate the electricity that is being generated from systems we have sold, we have to take account of a number of factors. In particular, the size of the systems, where they are deployed around the world (and therefore the yield in that particular country) and how long they’ve been installed for because solar PV degrades very slightly over time.

The formula for electricity generation is as follows:

Energy generation = N*YS*(1-D*Y)

N = Nominal power (kWp sold by Solarcentury)

YS = National average yield (kWh/kWp)

D = Degradation factor

Y = Operating year

Carbon prevented

Every country’s grid differs in how much carbon is burned to produce electricity. Therefore, we need to know how much electricity has been produced by our solar PV systems in each of the countries in which we operate. This is multiplied by the ‘carbon factor’ for that country. We then subtract the amount of carbon that’s been used to build and install the solar system and transport it to sites. We then add in the carbon we are saving by planting wildflower meadows at our solar farms. (Unimproved grassland and wildflower meadows store carbon year on year.)